Having grown by three hundred fifty-three times in just five years and hired more than a hundred people within eighteen months, Airbnb is the epitome of a unicorn. But it didn't get there solely through stellar marketing, product management, or leadership. No, it did so in large part through an unrelenting focus on experience design.

In the game Dungeons and Dragons (or D and D for short), the person with the plan is known as the dungeon master. He or she creates what's called a dungeon master's guide, which creatively steers the game while adhering to certain boundaries. That, minus the sorcery, orcs, and dragons, is basically the creative's role in product development.

Imagine trying to build a product that you know nothing about. Who is the user? What features do those users need? What’s the budget and deadline? What should the interface and color scheme look like?
A product’s creative brief — also known as the “product overview” or “project brief” — provides developers and designers with answers to those essential questions. Without it, they’re forced to hunt for basic project information, opening the door to costly errors and missed timelines.
With a creative brief in hand, however, product developers and designers can confidently and quickly jump in. On a recent healthcare product, for instance, a client brought us a very comprehensive creative product brief — complete with product flows, a timeline, and a description of success. The brief allowed us to quickly understand client needs, fashion a product roadmap, and hit the ground running.

Finally finishing development of your first mobile app is an exhilarating feeling. And it’s one that quickly fades when that app is rejected from Apple’s App Store.
Thousands of iOS developers endure this emotional roller coaster every week. But acceptance isn’t the end of the road. A whopping 59 percent of apps generate so little revenue that they don’t even recoup development costs.
Beyond painful rejections and inadequate monetization, poor development practices can also hurt users and cause PR nightmares. Just ask the developers of EnergyRescue. In January, the battery- saving app was booted from Google’s Play Store after a security vendor discovered it had been embedded with ransomware because of a development oversight.